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7:44 PM, Saturday May 7th 2022
Hi Mike, hope you are well. I’ll be handling your lesson 2 critique.
Starting with your Organic Arrows: Your lines look smooth and confident, well done. It looks like you understand that the arrow is supposed to get wider as it gets closer to the viewer, but it is a bit hit and miss whether you manage to apply this principle. Sometimes you manage to do this- https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/011d064f.jpg but I see more examples that look like this- https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/0f7c806c.jpg Try to avoid arrows that get wider and then narrower again, as it breaks the illusion of depth.
Moving on to your Organic Forms, I’m pleased to see your confident mark making continues. You’re mostly doing a pretty decent job of sticking to simple organic forms, with both ends round, evenly sized, and a consistent width without pinching or bulging. Mostly. I’ve put a few notes on your work here https://imgur.com/a/arQirEs Looking at your contour lines and contour ellipses, they are quite well aligned, but you’re not varying them. Or at least not in a way that suggests an understanding of the information they are supposed to describe. This image https://imgur.com/a/yDBbayD shows some possible variations of contour curves on organic forms. There are also some photos of a slinky pinned in the lesson 2 channel, that show contour ellipses changing as the slinky moves through space, I suggest you check them out.
Looking at your Texture Analysis you’ve done well at focusing on shadow shapes and (with the exception of the corn study) have managed to avoid relying on outlines to describe your textures. You’re making a pretty good transition on your gradients, great work.
Dissections are a mixed bunch. The first thing I saw was that you crossed or scribbled a couple of them out. Please don’t do this in your Drawabox homework. If you think you made a mistake just leave it and move on. I think your bee hive came out well, you did a good job of wrapping the texture around the form and breaking the silhouette, and although I think you may have started it by outlining the forms, you put some nice shadow shapes down and it reads pretty well. I also thought your oreo came out pretty cool. Your cobblestone and pebbles look like you outlined forms and filled in the gaps, rather than thinking about how the forms cast shadows. Your feathers, alligator skin, and pine cone are drawn explicitly, using lines. Try to carry forward what you practised in the texture analysis, as the same principles apply. Good work overall though, nice observations.
Form Intersections. Your forms look solid, with shallow consistent foreshortening, like they all exist in the same space, well done. Remember to construct your cones around a minor axis line though, like your cylinders. It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons.
Organic Intersections. exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms reasonably simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. What I said earlier about the contour curves on your organic forms applies here as well. The curves tell us how the forms sit in space, so pay attention to their degree. I'd like you to draw through all of your forms when doing this exercise again in the future, much like how we drew through our boxes we can gain a better understanding of how these forms rest in 3D space by making sure we draw through them in their entirety.
When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.
Mostly your work is well done, but I'd like to see you demonstrate an understanding of changing the degree of contour lines and ellipses on your organic forms, as looking at your newer lesson 4 submission, I can see it's still a problem there. Please submit 1 page of organic forms, half with contour lines, and half with contour ellipses. Vary the degree of your contour lines/ellipses to show how they sit in space https://imgur.com/a/QDpSVli and remember that the small ellipse shows which end(s) are facing the viewer as shown here https://imgur.com/a/yDBbayD
Next Steps:
Please submit 1 page of organic forms, half with contour lines, and half with contour ellipses.
5:27 AM, Sunday May 8th 2022
Hi!
Thank you so much for your critique and time!
I really appreciate it!. This gives me a lot of motivation, thankyou! Your critique is really helpfull!
I will sent you soon a page of organic forms!
Have a nice day! :)
8:06 AM, Sunday May 8th 2022
Hi,
Here is my page of organic forms
I hope this went a bit better, my lines are very shaky. I don't mind doing it again if this isn't right.
Thankyou for the help!
8:07 AM, Sunday May 8th 2022
Sorry i forgot the link lol
6:28 PM, Sunday May 8th 2022
Alrighty, lets take a look.
Starting with the positive, I can see you’re varying the degree of both your contour curves and contour ellipses now, great work! You’ve also drawn the tiny ellipse at an end that faces the viewer on all of these, good job. You’re heading in the right direction. For your forms with contour lines I noticed that all 3 have a pattern of wide-narrow-wide, without flipping direction. This isn’t any of the options shown in this image I shared with you last time https://imgur.com/a/yDBbayD and I wonder what orientation you are trying to convey? If it was just one of the three I’d put it down to experimentation, but you did it with all of them so I worry you might still be confused. I’ve put together two examples with a banana, I hope they might help you understand https://imgur.com/a/DpKhA9I https://imgur.com/a/rYnLT0t sometimes this stuff makes more sense if we look at examples in real life to help. I think what you’ve done is fine, for a lesson 2 standard, so I won’t make you do it again. Keep practising these for warm ups though, this stuff is important.
Something I skipped over earlier, because I saw Beckerito had already brought it up in your lesson 4 critique a few days ago and highlighted it in bold for you, but sadly doesn’t seem to have stuck- don’t forget to draw through your ellipses twice. This is not optional. Comfy discusses it in the ellipses section of lesson 1 and I’ll quote him here “As you get better, your ellipses will tighten up - the gaps between your successive passes will shrink and eventually your ellipses will appear much cleaner. At this point you'll probably be able to nail your ellipses in one pass, but I still want you to continue drawing through them for all of the Drawabox lessons. Outside of Drawabox, you're free to do what you like.” It’s even shown as a common mistake in the exercise instructions here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/drawthroughellipses Make sure you draw through all your ellipses throughout the cylinder challenge as you move forward. I’d also encourage you to hook your contour lines around a bit more, like you were earlier. Cutting them off abruptly can sometimes flatten out your forms.
Lastly, I want to call out that you’ve drawn two of your organic forms almost as ellipses. The bottom right and one of the bottom middle ones. This is something I noted in the markup of your work before. The one on the top right https://imgur.com/a/arQirEs and is also noted as a common mistake in the “keep your sausages simple” https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/simplesausage section on the lesson page (on the image, under "none of these"). Using ellipses instead of organic forms in your constructions can stiffen them up, so try to keep them with a more consistent width along their length when you practice these in the future.
So, you have a lot to think about and work on, but this is fine for lesson 2 so I’ll mark this as complete. If you want to make another page to see if you can apply the things I’ve mentioned and reply with it, I’ll be happy to check it, but I won’t hold you back or make you do it.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move on to lesson 3- oh wait you already have lol.
7:29 AM, Monday May 9th 2022
Hi,
Thank you so much for your feedback and time! It is very helpful and I will continue to practice it! :). It's also quite a fun exercise so I don't mind :). I will sent you some pages from what I have practiced.
Thank you, wish you a nice day!
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